My life kind of imploded since my last chapter. Because of it, I took longer to post this than I'd planned. It probably could do with several more rounds of edits to get it to where it should be (if indeed my idea for this chapter worked at all), but honestly, my heart's not in it right now.

The other two walk with her, having by now given up both on questioning her and the hope of receiving any answer from her. Though she was nearly drained of energy when they were roadside resting not twenty minutes earlier, she sets the pace now, not fast, but steady. Beth walks as though with a directive, her gait never quickening or slackening. When two walkers appear on the horizon, she barely registers their presence, leaving them to Daryl and Simon to dispatch at will. Nothing delineates her wordless progress; she keeps on with singular drive, though towards what it seems like nothing. They pass fields and fences, stretches of thorny blackberry bushes and long lanes shaded by hickory trees. As they go, Daryl's take on it alters several times over. If she'd only say what she's about. — At least she's again moving with some sense of purpose. — Ridiculous. She hasn't spoken a word. Where are they going? What is this? He has no patience for secrecy under any circumstance, but trailing after her this way grates on him even worse.

Simon, who's been splitting his pace between keeping up with Beth and trailing with Daryl, every now and then eyes Daryl, trying to assess his view of it. He can't tell if he should be alarmed by Beth's behavior or concerned about Daryl's temper. He looks back and forth between them, not knowing what to make of it, only hoping that whatever this is, they don't veer away from these acreages of farmland before properly stocking up on water.

…

Close to another hour of silent travel and Beth, without warning or apparent cause, cuts off the road. They watch as she shrugs off her pack and chucks it over the splintered weather-worn plank and wire fence. Beth reaches her hands up, steps onto the lowest rail and heaves herself over. Still unmoved to speak or indicate her purpose, she takes up her pack again and, as though she knows they'll follow after her, keeps on, footstep after footstep. They do climb over, exchanging looks as they go — Daryl with some unattended difficulty. Down the shaded dirt path they follow, through dying tall grass, overgrown weeds and wilted long-neglected crops. Past dried creek beds and pastures, past dilapidated structures, she walks. The next fence she reaches has been torn down and Beth never falters stepping over the wreckage.

"Hey—" Daryl grunts after her, fed up with all of this. "Where you goin'?" Her pace does not slow. "Greene— you listenin'? You hear me, girl?" She spares only a second to look blankly back at him, then Beth again turns forward and keeps going. Simon looks from Daryl to Beth; he follows along, more baffled than Daryl. Beth is moving with a sense of direction she hasn't been prone to of late, and her drive and stamina, too, are out of place.

"Beth?" Simon ventures once more to break through whatever this steeliness is. No indication comes that she even heard him.

Daryl looks to him with a sort of half-frustrated sneer, then keeps after the blonde in the lead. As they make progress her speed hastens, and Daryl takes in more than just the intransigent figure ahead of him. That ridge... That tree line...

"Beth—" he snarls. "Uh-uh." Just as ever since she began this trek, she does not listen. She does not pause. "You hear me? I said 'no'." Daryl's voice grows sterner, more aggressive and immediate. "Stop, Beth. Stop." Beth doesn't stop. "You don't wanna do this."

"What's she doing? What is this?" But Simon's questions go unanswered and he must lengthen his stride to keep up with the two ahead of him who both seem now to be into something he does not understand. The pace Daryl has to keep to keep up with her is wearing him down. His breathing's labored but he won't fall behind her.

Through the trees as the path rounds and bends ahead of them, a roof appears. Green gables and four brick chimneys cut into the air as though from another century. Once more Beth's stride carries her faster. She won't be slowed. What faint path they'd been traveling she again foregoes, cutting off instead into the trees for a more direct path. They pass a windmill and a crumbling lone-standing fireplace, a relic maybe of the property's first homestead. Her feet never falter as they carry her down a slope into a clearing and over another trampled fence. Daryl's still barking at her, grabbing at her wrist to stop her, but Beth pulls free. She is intent on getting there. The house ahead of her is tall and massive. Simon can see it better now, old and white – a farmhouse with a green roof. Not far from it is the burnt-out shell of an RV and the wreckage of a barn long before consumed by flames. Walkers roam the property in small clusters, spread out across the fields and grades. So too are there legions of rotting corpses on the grounds, long ago felled by others since long gone. Beth walks through them all, barely seeing, barely pausing as she knives three down. Behind her an arrow whizzes; one near her to the left staggers and drops. With knives and machetes, Simon and Daryl charge at some close by, then rush to catch up with their third.

"Beth," Daryl gnarls. "They're not here. Nob'dy's in there t'be found." Daryl reaches out to grab her by the strap of her pack to stop her, but he does not. In the end, he lets her go. And finally, Beth slows. No longer is she barrelling forward. She's arrived. Beth breathes.

With trepidatious but determined steps, she mounts the first porch step. It's bloody and weather ravaged, but it's still there. The porch boards creak beneath her weight as she tests them. Simon watches. With unknowing anticipation, he watches both her and Daryl monitoring her. The archer scowls at the scene unfolding before him, fuming, at what Simon has no way to know.

The old porch is rotted out but it supports Beth's weight as she crosses and reaches out. Like touching something back through the past, gingerly she touches her fingers to the knob. The screen is tattered and broken off the hinges but the heavy door still stands, already somewhat ajar. Three dirty fingertips stretch out to lightly press open the door. It creaks, and the sound of her front door opening echoes through the house. Beth Greene crosses over the threshold like it's been calling to her. The siren song she's been hearing since she knew she was close, since the road home appeared back into her life, has brought her here.

Home.

Beth steps through. It's been barraged by walkers and however many other groups have traveled through since. From room to room, there is more than one body on the ground, every foul one of them cleaved or impaled or shot through the head to stop it in its tracks. Smears and splatters of blood and filth stain the walls and floor in places, but Beth's eyes hardly see it. She sees instead her piano, her mama's clock, her grandmother's dishes. Beneath the rot and the refuse, it smells the same. The light still filters softly through the windows in the same way it always had, hitting the same spots on the floor it had this time of day all her life. Furniture's been moved or is missing, but the house is still unchanged: the front room, the dining room, through there the kitchen. Over there the lower bedroom, and the stairs… Her pack drops and Beth with it. Without clearing, without even listening for the presence of walkers inside, Beth sits on the now badly marred floor, her growing belly outlined by the tight stretch of her coat. Though the air is stale from disuse and the putrid stench of decay, Beth isn't bothered by the acrid turnings of her stomach. She breathes, first long and deep. Then her body shudders. And then, in time, the history comes, swelling in in torrents. So great and fast she cannot keep her head above it. Daryl, who'd mounted the porch steps behind her, lingers leaning against the doorframe, squinting and blinking uncomfortably as he watches what he wishes would not unfold. They shouldn't be here. He knows this. No good will come of returning here. He watches her in silence, waiting mutely for what comes next. Simon too approaches the door but Daryl grunts, and with a shake of his head and a shift of his shoulder he blocks the boy's path through. Whatever it is Beth is doing, whatever this is to her, she dudn't need an audience. Simon turns back and paces on the porch, keeping watch on the walkers still in the fields and in the yards. It's getting clearer to him what this place is to her.

"Hey," Daryl grunts behind him. When Simon turns and looks back Daryl nods his head and tosses the crossbow to him. "Here, get some target practice in." Spinning his finger, Daryl directs his companion back towards the rotting porch railing and beyond it the rotting roamers. He indicates the cluster of them near the toppled windmill. Simon nods, then breathes as he raises the crossbow, squaring the stock against his shoulder. Daryl watches as the boy takes aim, then his eyes turn back to the girl inside sitting on the floor alone. Daryl waits, his grip on his knife flexing and re-flexing over the hilt, waiting for its inevitable use. It feels intrusive to watch and reckless not to—

"Damn." Behind him, Simon relaxes his stance.

Daryl looks. Squinting, he shields his eyes to make out a neon arrow protruding from the left arm of something still stumbling and careening forward. "Y'missed."

"I know," Simon nods, lowering the bow. "'Close don't count,'" he speaks for Daryl.

"Reload. Put y'r back into it."

Handling it with some awkwardness, Simon drops the bow to the ground upright to step his foot through the stirrup. He uses both hands to pull the string. He gets it close to notching, but doesn't manage it all the way back. Ordinarily, Daryl might have snorted and made some kind smirking, razzing remark such as, "Hell, even she c'n do it," but Daryl's mostly given him this task to grant Beth some space while she does, whatever it is she's doing. His true attention is on her, not the bow or the kid or the distant walkers. Coolly Simon looks at him, then breathes in and tries again. This time he notches it fast. He lifts the bow again, aims, and shoots. The arrow tracks but hits a neck and not the brain. "We c'n get 'em," Daryl huffs, nodding towards the misfired bolts, "but no point in shootin' 'em if they're not hittin' their mark." Simon answers with a wry and crooked look of contrition.

A scuffling sounds somewhere behind them within the house. Daryl beckons, and in one motion catches the crossbow tossed to him and turns and spins into the house. Like lightning, Daryl reloads, then crosses the Greene threshold poised to shoot. In silent broad strides that ignore the hurt in his body, Daryl stalks through the open room. Passing the unmoved Beth, he targets his aim in the direction of the kitchen. The thing is shot and downed as soon as its ugly snarling face appears. It drops, but the house is not silent without it; there are more.

Daryl exhales loudly. They shouldn't be here at all, and no way should Beth have planted herself there on the floor without them having cleared the house. "Beth," he grunts, looking down on her. "C'mon. Get up, it's time." He gets gruffer and more volatile when his words elicit no response. "C'mon; no good's comin' from sittin' here." With a quick pivot, Daryl turns, pulls his knife and hurls it. A walker crashes down to the base of the stairs, and still, Beth Greene does not stir. Daryl glances at her, then moves past her. In as quick and fluid of a motion as he can manage with his injuries, Daryl dips down to retrieve the blade then jumps over the fallen corpse to rush upstairs. "Simon!" he yells as he bounds up the staircase. "Greene! Get off your ass!" Simon bursts through the door and shuts and bolts it behind him. He glances at Beth then moves swiftly through the bottom floor, his blades raised and readied. Simon kills three, two with his knife, a third with the hard and repeated slam of a pantry door. Upstairs there's some thudding and commotion as Daryl takes down four more. From the looks of it, many more than these had made it into the house; these were only stragglers or late-comers.

With nine taken down in total, Simon and Daryl meet at the landing. "You good?" Simon exhales, catching his breath.

Daryl nods and grunts. Breathing heavily, he coughs and spits to the floor. "Clear?" He waits for Simon's nod then shoulders his weapon and at last really looks around, taking in this space he'd once inhabited. He can see it all: Where they'd gathered for dinner. Where they'd debated Randall's fate. The room where Carl, still so little then, had recuperated. This old farmhouse… just one more place where things went south. Again he eyes her. She hasn't moved, hasn't budged since taking that spot. He can't make out what she's thinking or what it is she's feeling, but he won't bother her again till she's ready. What's calling to her in this place he couldn't say. Her family isn't here. What from her past she still holds onto she carries with her, it isn't corporeal. All those months ago in that old moonshine shack, Beth'd burned it down when he'd said it was too close to being home. All considered, he knows this homecoming's not the same for her, but still, Daryl'd never thought to see her here, returning home, slipping backward into the past. Not at all, and not like this with her so unlike herself. This place is just another shell of another old life. It's dangerous to linger. There are walkers not small in number outside but the truer danger is the house itself. The longer they linger the higher the tides of memory will rise, and Daryl fears Beth will get bogged down. She'd cauterized the past with him with that backwoods ramshackle distillery they'd torched, but wounds reopen if a person lets them; if they worry them and trouble them. They've got no business being here. Hershel's not here, and this ain't where they'll find Maggie. This place is a trap, set especially for her.

Sore as his body is, Daryl can't just stand there. He paces, his countenance austere and agitated. His breathing comes heavily as the inertness of waiting on her wears on him. She's so still. She isn't crying; she doesn't appear to be doing anything but sitting. Daryl can't tell by looking at her what she's doing and it's unnerving for it to be this way between them again after all this time. Simon hangs back, lingering unnoticed on the sidelines. He gets it. He gets what this is. Feeling like an intruder, he's uncertain of his next best move. Any other house they would ransack, but he can't raid Beth's house while she sits there like a sentry. Would stepping out be more of a disturbance than remaining silent and motionless in the background? Would taking a load off and finding someplace to sit and take some respite offend?

Unsteady in this enterprise of hers, Daryl can't make peace with it. The small figure she cuts in the wide expanse of the empty room, bundled and bedraggled and so still, feels not his to intrude upon. She's sunken into something too deep for him to follow without her clearance.

He's never grown as close with another person as he's come to be with her. More than with Merle, more than with Carol or with Rick, although improbable, it's been her. Through their common losses, through their troubles and the horrors they've endured, through the ways they see the world and the way they were forced into facing it together, they have united. Through their isolation and the camaraderie it fostered, through the friendship they forged and the unlikely deeper bond it ignited, every wall he ever built he's let her through. She's seen him despair, held him as he's cried, confided in him, trusted in him, accepted him. And he knows her. Knows her spirit and her heart. He knows the workings of her mind and her body. He's smelled her sweat and seen her bleed; he's been there as she's gotten sick, as she's pissed and shit. He knows her laugh and the sound of her footfall and seen her both cry and cum. She is is a living thing, and none of it turns his head, none of it stirs a sense of shame or unease. He's been with her through desperation, humiliation, and terror, also through joy, and passion, and relief. His defenses are down, and he needs no space from any of it, but he cannot witness this. This silent vigil of hers is a private thing he's wary to tread too closely to. It's hers, not his. She's lost countless more people than he. It's she who'll deliver their child into this broken world, not he. She's always felt things bigger, and clearer, and truer than he.

Uneasy, he averts his eyes. Scanning instead the walls, the windows, and the ceiling above, he views all of it as suspect. This is not where they should be. Being here is not for what they have been searching and enduring. This place threatens more treachery than the world beyond. Everything is off — the air, the mood, Beth. She's been listless for days, but the contrast of her now so immovable, impenetrable, and stationary —after her willful crusade to journey there — is unsettling.

Breaking the silence, Daryl huffs, then jerks his head toward Simon. "Keep an eye out." Dropping his hand from rubbing idly at his beard, Daryl turns away from the scene and reclimbs the stairs.

Simon nods. Left behind, he shuffles in place. He'll watch their backs, keep an eye on the doors and windows, but it feels disrespectful to stand there just watching her. Keeping his eyes askance, he diverts his attention from Beth. He turns away, shifting both his weight and his focus. The house has been tossed, but still, there are photos, and artwork, and mementos — artifacts of a family life once lived. He treads softly, conscious that his steps are all the movement in the room.

Behind him, Beth sits alone, too deep in what's taken hold of her to register his departure. In stealth, her fingers touch the grain of the floor, solid and grooved and weather-worn beneath her hand. This is where she crawled. Where she learned to walk. Where she came home to after dates and heartbreaks and everyday triumphs. This was her home. Not just hers but her family's for generations. Always it had been there for her. It had been meant to be hers to come home to — from college, from career, one day with a husband and maybe eventually a child of her own. Coming home had never been meant to look like this. And with the world as it is and the house having been surrendered as it had been, she was never meant to come home again at all. The rooms, which comprise her home but also do not, are empty. They have more than once been rummaged-through and deserted. The house has been desecrated since these floors were truly hers to walk, but what were hers — the people and the voices and the shadows that they cast — are gone but still hers to hold. The space is still hers to know, from the looseness of a floorboard to a cracked brick in the hearth. There in the wainscotting in the dining room remains the gash she'd grown up knowing, upstairs still would be the split in Shawn's door where he and Maggie slammed it too hard twice too many times, and in the kitchen the third drawer that sticks when pulled. The second lowest stair must still creak, the antique mirror in the hallway is still cloudy with distortions, and when the winter comes, the second story west-facing windows will once again leak. Her parents, her siblings, her friends as close as blood, they are not there, but still the house that had loved and protected and fostered her holds them near. In the veins of the grains of wood, in the shadows cast by the sun, in the spaces where they lived, they are not fully erased. The house is not as empty to her as it is to Daryl and Simon. Coming to it as she had with desire and determination, Beth had known intuitively she needed to come but not what she would find. She sits there alone, having no mother to confide in, no father to rejoice in. No siblings to lean on. Her child will never know them and will never know this place. There will be no returning after this. Beth feels for what she needs. The emotions are thick and strong as they swell and rise. In this house there had been life and cherishing and tenderness. In this house there had been faith and hope and redemption. There had been trust and family and fidelity. Here had been grace, resiliency, and conviction. Amid the carnage and debris, it may not be perceivable but neither is it wholly absent.

Above head, Daryl walks the hallway of this house he knows. He'd stayed upstairs when they'd brought him in after being shot, but otherwise, he'd only ever been up there to check the windows, find the sightlines, scope the house's sitting, but he knows these rooms. He passes Hershel's, then Maggie and Glenn's. This one where he'd bunked had been Shawn's, then only Jimmy's. Another door down is Beth's. He lingers at the open door frame. By the looks of it, she'd in no way been the last person through this room, and likely not the last to have slept in the bed, but still, it feels intrusive to enter the space without her, without her consent. He surveys it though. It doesn't seem like Beth. It does in the sense that the whole house feels like her, feels like Hershel and the two good girls he'd raised. But Daryl'd seen the room Beth'd made for herself in the prison. He'd even brought her some of the things she had hung up in it. There were pictures and poems, photographs and knick-knacks, a birdcage, jewelry, figurines, and clothes. It had felt out of place in a prison cell, and to him out of place in this new world, but it hadn't seemed out of place for a teenager. It had felt very much like her. This room though reflects nothing of Beth. If Beth had been alive a hundred years earlier, this still might have been her room. Daryl blinks, then moves on, turning back into the long sunlit hallway. This room doesn't matter anymore. The girl who called this room hers will never return.

The heavy uneven steps of his bad leg disturb the quiet. There's a strangeness to walking the halls of a home that he once knew, knowing it's been treated by others the way they themselves have treated countless other homes. His memory touches on the faces who once lived in these spaces, but Daryl turns his mind from them. Their friends are not here and this is not his impasse to sink into. Clearing his throat, he starts first in Hershel's room. They don't need much, their bags are packed full already. Though most of what Daryl's got on is cut and bloody and half their clothes are stained with his own blood, a change of clothes is far from his mind. He's not about to descend the stairs wearing a sweater of Hershel's or one of his coats. If they were desperate for winter clothes he couldn't afford to care — treating the house like a frozen memorial wouldn't mitigate the demands of survival — but they can make do with what they've got. Even so, Daryl does open drawers. More from the force of habit and an effort to afford Beth space, he shifts through shirts and pants and the rest. In doing this, the old vet comes back to him, nearly embodied, so strong is the sense memory of the friend who is gone. Without willing it, the coarseness of his words to Simon come back to him. He had a point to make on that hill in the cold dark and no time to make it, but he'd never intended to be so crass about this loss. Hershel Greene had been an eccentric in the way of their survival when they met him, but like his daughters, he'd evolved and risen to the demands of the reshaped world, and his ruin cut a deep wound in his survivors. Daryl moves on. In the closet, still, hang the clothes of Beth's mother. Dresses. Blouses. Nothing Beth needs for the winter. Still he pauses, questioning if it might not mean something to her to have something of her mother's with her when she becomes a mother herself. Another memory surfaces; an unwilling flashback to that day outside the barn, to seeing the remains of Hershel's wife step snarling out of the darkness, to the scene of her tearing and biting at her own crying daughter. Daryl winces, chasing away the vision. For Beth's sake, for Maggie's, for Hershel's, that's not an image to carries with him.

Abandoning the closet, Daryl moves next to the bathroom. It's clear from the size of it, as well as the age of the house, that this originally had been a whole other room. Only when septic tanks had been installed on the farm and indoor plumbing brought in was the space repurposed as a bathroom. If in a town somewhere, he might resort to the toilet tank to find potable water, but here there are still working wells. Daryl twists the faucets and waits for water to come. At first the pipes groan and screech, but then it does come. Yellow and murky at first, it soon runs clear and he cups his hands under it to splash his face with the icy water before lowering his mouth to the faucet's spout to drink in as much as he's able. It tastes fresh and like minerals. The white basin pools with the blood and dirt washing from his hands and face but he expends no attention to it. Shutting the water off, with less reverence than with the clothes, he scours drawers and cabinets for medicine or anything they could make good use of if had. With the rooms already having been ransacked he holds little hope any medical supplies remain to be found, but still he looks. He does find a mostly-full bottle of vitamins for seniors and a nearly empty bottle of baby Tylenol. There's nothing else to find. Crossing back across the room to the hall, Daryl stops at the antique chest of drawers and the rosewood inlaid jewelry box atop it. He hesitates, then pulls it down. With solemn deference he opens it, not fully knowing why. Pearl earrings. An old sterling silver chain. A gold bangle bracelet. A couple of brooches. Several necklaces. And a gold band strung on a chain holding a squared antiqued pendant. Looking closer, Daryl spots the tiny hinges on the thing. It takes him a couple tries to open the locket but when it does open, he knows exactly who he's looking at. On one side a smiling infant, so clearly Beth. The dimples in her baby smile unmistakeable and, if possible, her eyes even larger and bluer then. Framed in the other half, the Greene family eighteen years ago or so: a younger Hershel, a six-year-old Maggie, and Shawn, maybe two or so. Daryl studies it for some time, then shuts the clasp closed and with little forethought pockets the whole thing. Leaving the room behind, he heads closer to the stair landing, pausing there to listen. He hears nothing below to concern him; he hears little to nothing at all. If she's not moving, she's not ready to move on, so Daryl keeps on giving her space.

Still stiff and sore, he moves with less attention through the next two rooms, the boys' and Maggie's. Still there in Maggie's room lies Glenn's guitar. It feels like another life ago that they were here, living this early version of surviving. Daryl bypasses nearly everything. He's not looking for anything exactly. They can't carry more clothes or blankets, and he's not about to give Beth something of her sister's or dress Simon in something that belonged to her dead brother or boyfriend. He doesn't take much. He can't have them carrying the weight of this house on their backs; they're already carrying the prison and everyone they've lost.

Beth breathes, focussed and still within herself. What she'd hoped to gain, thought to find in coming there, was instinctive more than anything, She came to it like a homing pigeon or some creature in blind migration. The getting there was what had driven her. Being there is too big to scrutinize or make sense of. She exists in it, letting herself feel it and absorb what she can.

The echo of his heavy footsteps above announces Daryl's nearing the stairwell landing. "Sy?" But rather than wait for a response he starts down the stairs, despite the discomfort in his leg.

Looking up from the book he'd sourced, Simon greets Daryl with a reassuring nod. "We're good," he answers, confirming no changes on their end.

"There's water here. Y'should drink somthin'." His narrow eyes shift to Beth. "Th' both 'f you."

"Sure," Simon nods. "I'll refill the bottles. See if I c'n source more carriers."

Where he stands, only partially down the stairs, Daryl eyes Beth, then looks again to Simon who's rising from the spot where he too had taken a seat on the floor. "She say anythin'?"

Simon shakes his head, feeling it strange to talk about her this way, as though she weren't right there with them. But truly, the Beth he knows isn't there.

Wherever she's withdrawn to is unreachable. As though submerged below the surface of all else around her, she can hear them only from a removed distance. And there Beth sits, seemingly sinking in the impossibility of being home again. Her hands where they lie keep her grounded to the floor. She's home. She's pregnant. There is no family here. There's no path laid out for where or how to proceed from here. She's trying...

Beth never thought to be here again — not the house, but here, immobilized within herself. It's an indulgence she can't afford and one she'd already fought to conquer but, nonetheless, she's been succumbing to it. Each day letting the darkness and the quiet and uncertainty close in around her, letting anxiety and new fears get the better of her.

"You ever seen her like this?"

Daryl glances at her. It had been here Beth had gone silent and still once before. He didn't like to think what it had taken to snap her out of it. With a soft thud and clatter, Daryl lets drop the pillow sack only a little full of meager supplies. "Gonna," he falters, not set on his own intentions, "give it one more go-around. Check th' sightlines." Simon nods, suspecting he's really only still giving her space. Daryl remounts the stairs, their age creaking beneath him as he goes.

Upstairs once more with no purpose but to check again the windows he already has, Daryl turns to the wall of Greene family photographs. Some look as old as the house itself, yellowing in their sepia tones. Some are shades of charcoals and greys, some glow hazy and amber in the faded hues of the sixties and seventies, still more are crisp and vibrant in their currency. He spots Maggie as a toddler with her mother, Hershel's first wife. He sees Hershel as a young man, maybe no older than twenty-four. He sees a scrawny little girl, maybe eleven or twelve, all long limbs, knees and elbows, mounted English style astride a copper-colored Warmblood. Visible beneath the shadow cast by her black riding helmet are wisps of blonde hair and a pair of sparkling blue eyes rivaled only by her dimpled smile. Beth. Images of her hang surrounded by generations and so many other frames and photos. Some recent, some nearly a century old, all shaping together the story of a family that now is all but gone. Among them, something catches his eye, and after looking closer, he turns back, heading up the hallway to something. Daryl finds what he was after, and having found it pulls the large frame from the wall. Flipping it over, he employs his knife to pry up the backing fasteners. With care, he drops the velvet backboard to the floor. With the frame open, he pulls free what he was after, folds it twice over and stuffs it into his breast pocket. There's a creak in the floorboards as he sets the frame and glass to lean against the wall without breaking. — Daryl turns.

There she is. Silent as ever, standing some paces behind him in motionless reverie within the doorframe of her old room. Daryl completes his turn toward her as furtively as though he were face to face with a doe, loathe to startle her into retreat. When she doesn't flinch, he draws closer, his focus solely on her. Beth stands there, looking at her past. She'd never thought to stand here again. Within her gaze, the space transforms from something merely physical to a measurement of all that's transpired in the interim of her absence. The world and she are both so very, very different since she last stood in this spot. Beside her, Daryl watches as Beth breathes in, then steps forward, crossing the threshold into the past. Her eyes catch on artifacts from a different world. This room, this house, the things and ghosts within it — no longer hers, but calling to her. From behind his thick lanks of unruly hair, Daryl observes, with arms crossed, biting his thumb tip, waiting for her to come back to him. Somewhere below them, Simon can be heard moving about. Having briefly looked away, Daryl looks back to find Beth frozen in her progress, staring. She's poised motionless some paces from the open door to the shared bathroom, staring through to her reflection in the remaining fragments of that shattered mirror.

Daryl looks at her. His low rumble solemnly breaks the silence, "That ain't you anymore." It takes a moment, but Beth does turn her face towards him. She blinks. "It ain't," he says. Beth blinks again, hearing him, maybe for the first time in some time. Subtly, Daryl jerks his head toward the hallway. "Com'on," he rasps, "you're done here." Nearly without motion, Beth nods and stirs herself to leave the room. "We can't stay here," Daryl adds gently as needless confirmation.

Beth passes him into the hallway. "We can't stay anywhere."

Daryl hates that her saying this, but it's been over a day since he's heard her voice so he'll take her speaking like a defeatist over her staying mute and keeping it all inside. Daryl too turns to leave the room behind and head for the stairs, but again Beth has stopped, caught in another snare of the house. The photographs... so many of them. So many memories and names and faces now only hers to remember. She stands there looking, as story after story flood in at once to drown her. Daryl stands tall alongside her. Wordlessly he takes her hand, intertwining his finger in hers. Beth takes this lifeline, allowing it to tether and to buoy her. As delicate as the landing of a moth or firefly, she rests her head against the breadth of his shoulder. Standing there, side by side, Beth squeezes his hand. Daryl exhales the breath he's practically been holding since he realized her intention of coming here, at long last finding some hope for her resurfacing from this.

"Com'on," he tugs on her hand. "Y'don't need these. You've got 'em all already."

Beth nods, and allows herself to be steered away. Before descending the stairs, Daryl stops once more to check the windows. There are scatterings of walkers spread throughout the property, but in the time they've been there their numbers have not swelled. The dead have not stormed the house. Daryl can't help thinking, as he collects Beth to make their way downstairs, it's because the dead have already claimed it.

"Got water," Simon tells them. "No food though; looks like it's been scavenged couple times over." Daryl sees Simon's already taken up the pillowcase and packed the contents away.

Impatient to be gone before the will to do so leaves her, or before their situation in the house goes sideways, Daryl eyes the door and their ready bags. Heavy with supplies, they're lighter on food than he'd like. Daryl swallows. "We'll try the cellar. We stored supplies down there in case we had to shelter there."

Simon nods.

Daryl handles the bow, nocking it and raising it up. Simon takes up a fire iron from the fireplace and follows Daryl through to the kitchen and the shut closed basement door. Holding a flashlight overhead, Daryl listens at the door. Hearing nothing, he tests the knob, then flings the door open. The wooden steps lead down into darkness, only faintly lit by Daryl's light and a papered-over hopper window on the far side of the blackness. Simon pounds the railing to induce a stirring. The telltale sound of confined snarling and shuffling arises but by the sound of it, their practiced ears judge the count to be manageable. They descend into the basement, first Simon then Daryl, and find three walkers who evidently had killed each other in a struggle over the remaining supplies. Daryl shoots one straight away, Simon kicks another back then drives the cast iron poker right through its rotted eye. Daryl hurls his blade at the other. All three fall heavy to the floor. The air is thick and fetid with the rancid stench of them having been closed in there for so long. Simon and Daryl are quick to go to work, stepping over the felled carcasses making straight for the shelves. They score canned goods and bagged staples. They leave the batteries and bottled water. They don't linger, just long enough for Simon to recover two handguns from the remains of the basement face-off.

Beth remains on the cellar stairs, feeling no draw to descend. Leaving behind the fire iron, Simon carries a packed wooden crate up the stairs, past Beth and back to the front room and their waiting packs. When Daryl makes it back to her he gestures with the bow to guide her away, but Beth does not budge. She looks at Daryl, then holds her breath and steps into the dark rankness. She does not bring a light; she knows this space. It'd been she who'd helped stock it. Beth moves past everything she knows they don't have time for, straight to what she's certain is still there waiting. Shifting boxes, Beth pushes things aside until she extracts a loaded manila envelope. With it in hand, she climbs the stairs back to Daryl who's waiting there for her.

His gaze steady, Daryl spots what she'd gone to retrieve as Hershel's emergency go-package of seeds. "Com'on," he prods gently. "This was never where we were gonna find them." He looks at her and waits until her eyes and focus are truly on him. "They're out there, somewhere. It was j'st never gonna be here."

Quickly they pack the extra food and the firearms and little bit of ammo found with the basement walkers. Beth watches as Daryl packs her father's store of seeds with care into her bag, and then allows him to assist her in pulling it back on. Daryl too pulls on his, then Simon. Water is secured, weapons are readied, and Simon looks through the front door the plan their best path out. "Right," he nods. "Past the barn to drive, then up to the treeline." He pulls open the door and pushes open the screen, Simon steps out and Beth moves to follow.

"Beth." Daryl tugs at her with just the hint of a pull on her pack's strap. He moves in close, earnest and near. His hooded eyes find then look away before settling back on hers. He worries his lower lip as her name, spoken in his rough gravel voice, lingers heavily between them. His expression creases and darkens. "Listen, that night back there, b'fore the cabin when we was on th' hill, what I said about Hershel— I'm sorry. Never should've said the way I did."

Stoic, Beth shakes her head. "It happened, like you said. You weren't wrong to say it." She does not smile, just slips past him out the door. For the last time, Beth crosses the porch, pushing back the memories of violence and terror the last time she left. Beth Greene descends the steps into the day's remaining sunlight, heading back onto the road, leaving behind everything she must.

Updated A/N: Thank you for reading. This was my Siren song sequence. I wasn't sure if most readers easily guessed the farm would be the destination last chapter or not. (I know LiasonFan2 did!) I have wondered about the farm since the end of S2, and wanted to explore what coming home to it might mean to Beth and Daryl in the context of a story so very much about finding a home and so very haunted by the characters who have been lost.
Any and all feedback is more than welcome as I will be revisiting this chapter for tweaking and revising. [Does it make sense that they do not stay? Could things be clarified? Does Beth's process while there seem logical/justified/realistic that A.) indeed she does work through something and B.) that at the end she might be on her way to improving?] P.S. Did anyone spot the tiny Easter egg to S4E12 "Still"?
Again, thank you for reading and for being on this journey with Simon, Daryl, and Beth.